Jungle: Dancing in the Sun

Dance. There is probably no better word to describe Jungle. For more than a decade, the British group has built an identity around movement in which music and image are virtually inseparable. Funk, soul, disco, hip-hop and electronic music come together in songs made for dancing, but also in music videos where choreography has become just as important as the musicians themselves.

It seems curious to remember it now, when Jungle fill major venues and have amassed billions of streams, but in their early days very little was known about who was behind the project. Its members appeared simply as J and T, avoiding showing their faces. They were Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland, two school friends who founded Jungle in London in 2013.

There was also something of a statement of intent in that anonymity. Jungle never wanted everything to revolve exclusively around its founders. Collaboration and a sense of community were part of the project from the very beginning, and their videos were created with a shifting collective of dancers and choreographers who ultimately developed one of the most recognisable audiovisual languages in recent British music. The same philosophy carried over to the stage: what began as a duo eventually grew into a seven-piece live band.

From Jungle to Volcano

Their debut album, Jungle, was released in 2014 and reached the UK Top 10. Virtually all the ingredients that would come to define their sound were already there: falsettos, irresistible basslines, 1970s soul filtered through electronic production, and a rhythmic elegance capable of evoking the past without ever becoming an exercise in nostalgia.

Songs such as Busy Earnin’, Time, The Heat and Julia quickly took the group beyond the independent circuit.

For Ever, released in 2018, introduced a stronger electronic presence without abandoning their blend of neo-funk, hip-hop and modern soul. Three years later, Loving in Stereo took Jungle to number three on the UK charts for the first time. But the real turning point came with Volcano in 2023.

Their fourth album featured Back On 74, the song that turned Jungle into a global phenomenon. The track went platinum in both the UK and the United States and helped the group win their first BRIT Award. The tour that followed sold out major venues around the world and took them to stages including Coachella, All Points East and The O2 in London. Jungle have now amassed around 3.4 billion streams.

Lydia Kitto and a New Jungle

The musical transformation was accompanied by an important evolution within the band itself. Lydia Kitto, a longtime collaborator and regular member of the live band, officially joined Jungle in 2024. J Lloyd and Tom McFarland thus formally went from being a duo to becoming a trio.

Her addition is significant because it acknowledges something that had always been central to the project’s philosophy: Jungle is best understood as a collective rather than as a vehicle for two individual personalities.

And it is this new line-up that now embarks on the next chapter.

After Volcano Comes Sunshine

Sunshine, Jungle’s fifth album, was released on 14 August. Its first single, Carry On, was unveiled as BBC Radio 1’s Hottest Record and heralds a new chapter arriving just as the group is enjoying the greatest international success of its career.

The album is accompanied by their most ambitious tour to date, with shows across North America, Europe and Australia. The scale of the venues speaks for itself: New York’s Barclays Center, Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena, Paris’ Accor Arena, Berlin’s Uber Arena, where they will perform on 8 November, Munich’s Olympiahalle and The O2 in London. In Spain, they will perform at Madrid’s Movistar Arena on 26 October and Barcelona’s Palau Sant Jordi on 28 October.

It is no small leap for a band that began by hiding the faces of its founders.

Sziget, Witness to the Transformation

There is one European festival from which this evolution can be traced particularly clearly: Sziget.

Jungle have performed at least three times at the Budapest festival, and their different appearances read almost like snapshots of three distinct moments in their career.

The first came on 11 August 2015, when the group was still riding the momentum of their self-titled debut. Jungle had existed for barely two years and had released just one album, but they were already beginning to demonstrate how well their blend of synthesisers and soul influences worked in front of thousands of people.

They returned exactly four years later, on 11 August 2019, this time during the For Ever era. The setlist showed just how much the project had grown: Casio, Heavy, California and Happy Man sat alongside Busy Earnin’ and Time, survivors from that first album that remained among their most powerful live tracks.

Their third appearance came on 12 August 2022, during the Loving in Stereo tour. By then, the show was considerably longer, and Jungle could build a set around songs such as Keep Moving, Romeo, Good Times and Casio.

Three concerts, seven years and three different stages in their evolution. What makes the progression even more striking is that the global phenomenon of Back On 74 was still to come.

Seen from the perspective of 2026, Sziget makes it clear that Jungle’s success did not suddenly emerge from a viral hit. By the time Back On 74 definitively won over an international audience, Lloyd-Watson and McFarland had already spent a decade refining precisely what seemed to have appeared overnight.

The Image Dances Too

To understand Jungle, listening to their records is not enough. From their earliest videos, the band understood that image could function as an extension of music. Rather than placing themselves in front of the camera, they frequently gave centre stage to dancers. Choreography ceased to be mere decoration and became part of the identity of each song.

That decision also helps explain the distinctive anonymity of their early years. While much of the music industry was busy creating instantly recognisable stars, Jungle preferred to build an entire universe.

The success of Back On 74 brought this concept to its fullest expression and introduced it to millions of new viewers, but the language itself had been developing for years. The press material accompanying Sunshine continues to define the group precisely through this combination of modern disco, soul and hip-hop with a visual universe shaped by choreography.

A Concert as a Party

There is, finally, one place where all these dimensions come together: the live stage.

Jungle have evolved into a seven-piece live band, and their concerts seek to reproduce the sophistication of their studio production without sacrificing the physical energy of the songs. The promotional material for the new tour itself describes their shows less as conventional concerts than as an ongoing party, built around the chemistry between the musicians, the vocals and the live instrumentation.

Perhaps this offers the simplest explanation for their growth. Jungle have managed to make sophisticated music without making it distant, to revive sounds from the past without becoming trapped by them, and to construct an extraordinarily elaborate aesthetic without losing the elemental impulse that drives the entire project: to make people dance.

Let the Sunshine In

There is even a certain symbolic continuity in the titles of their two most recent albums. After Volcano comes Sunshine. From the volcano to the sun; from the album that triggered their international explosion to the one that must show what comes next after achieving it.

That may well be the real challenge facing this new chapter of Jungle. Back On 74 could have turned their formula into a gilded cage. Sunshine will have to show whether the group chooses to repeat it or continue transforming it.

What is beyond dispute is how far they have come. In 2013, they were two friends hiding behind the initials J and T. In 2015, they arrived at Sziget with just one album. In 2022, they returned to the festival with a much broader repertoire and a larger line-up. Four years later, they are J Lloyd, Tom McFarland and Lydia Kitto, releasing a new album and touring some of the biggest venues in the world.

The scale has changed, the stages have changed, and even the composition of the group has changed. But the invitation remains essentially the same.